| It begins with a solemn funeral…for a car. By the end of Chris Paine's lively and informative documentary, the idea doesn't seem quite so strange. As narrator Martin Sheen notes, "They were quiet and fast, produced no exhaust and ran without gasoline." Paine proceeds to show how this unique vehicle came into being and why General Motors ended up reclaiming its once-prized creation less than a decade later. He begins 100 years ago with the original electric car. By the 1920s, the internal-combustion engine had rendered it obsolete. By the 1980s, however, car companies started exploring alternative energy sources, like solar power. This, in turn, led to the late, great battery-powered EV1. Throughout, Paine deftly translates hard science and complex politics, such as California's Zero-Emission Vehicle Mandate, into lay person's terms (director Alex Gibney, Oscar-nominated for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, served as consulting producer). And everyone gets the chance to have their say: engineers, politicians, protesters, and petroleum spokespeople--even celebrity drivers, like Peter Horton, Alexandra Paul, and a wild man beard-sporting Mel Gibson. But the most persuasive participant is former Saturn employee Chelsea Sexton. Promoting the benefits of the EV1 was more than a job to her, and she continues to lobby for more environmentally friendly options. Sexton provides the small ray of hope Paine's film so desperately needs. Who Killed the Electric Car? is, otherwise, a tremendously sobering experience. --Kathleen C. Fennessy Stills from Who Killed the Electric Car? (click for larger image) Writer/Director Chris Paine Blogs About Who Killed the Electric Car
 When Who Killed the Electric Car premiered at the Sundance Film Festival (on the same weekend as An Inconvenient Truth), we wondered whether movie goers were ready for a new kind of 'action film'. Fortunately people jumped onboard and this seems even more true today.
We put this DVD together after the release of the film to include a dozen short scenes we couldn't quite fit into our story. My favorite is one with Stan and Iris Ovshinsky who developed the revolutionary battery technology that powered GM's electric car (and today's Prius). These two brilliant octogenarians took our small camera crew on a Willy Wonka style tour of their inventions including the world's largest thin film solar cell factory. As we stood under a football field size machine in Troy Michigan, I blustered "Is solar power back?" Stan exclaimed " What?! Solar never went away... What was back was backward thinking!" And as his machine cranked out miles of solar cells above us, we knew he was right.
I'm especially glad that the optimistic last scene of Who Killed the Electric Car has proven that we weren't just wishful thinkers when we finished our edit. The clips feature the first glimpse of the ultra fast Tesla electric sports prototype as well the Zenn neighborhood electric vehicle. Both cars are starting to roll off production lines today. And while the State of California (and some car companies) are still gambling on hydrogen fuel cells, plug-in cars are proving to be more environmentally efficient and popular. Early adopters deserve a lot of the credit. Oil companies and the internal combustion engine monopoly may have "killed" thousands of electric cars (EVs) in the 1990s, but EVs are coming back. (Stay tuned for next film...)
I hope you'll find our documentary takes you on a wild ride out of the 20th century and into the 21st. --Chris Paine, Writer/Director |
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 We are still waiting for an electric car |
| Review Date: June 27, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Clark D. Young, Fort Worth, TX, USA |
After viewing "Who Killed the Electric Car?", I am confused. GM now says that the Chevrolet Volt is only 2 or 3 years away from going into production. What was wrong with the EV1 that was leased to California drivers? They loved it. So what did GM do? They demanded that every single one be returned to them, and, save for 1 single EV1 that ended up in an auto museum, they were crushed. But don't blame just GM. Ford, Toyota, and Honda also had electric vehicles on the road during the same time period. What happened to those vehicles? We still cannot buy or lease any of them. What happened to all those electric vehicles? Where are they now? We are still waiting for viable electric cars to be sold as alternatives to gasoline powered internal combustion polluting cars. The best that we have right now are hybrids.
As the movie states, GM crushed the EV1 (literally) and only months later, introduced the Hummer. Kind of hard to feel sorry for GM now, isn't it? |
Electric cars ... who knew?
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| Review Date: January 30, 2010 |
| Reviewer: D. Reed, Chevy Chase, MD |
Who Killed The Electric Car is a movie that all concerned citizens should see! It was well done and it showed facts without a political agenda. You're free to draw your own conclusions, but you'll think about why automobile manufacturers secretly destroyed their electric cars when movie stars and many others were going to extreme lengths in an attempt buy one.
I was not aware that people were using electric cars as there regular means of transportation in the 1990s. That fact and many other facts were real eyeopeners for me. After watching the movie, I'm convinced that electric cars will be the wave of the future. The demands of the public will cause automobile manufacturers to build electric cars and not destroy them. The general public will not accept having to spend their money on oil related products and expensive maintenance when they can have more efficient, clean, and almost maintenance free automobiles. |
All Americans should see
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| Review Date: January 30, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Valerie A. Lutzen, Mequon, WI |
| A real investigation should be conducted as to why this car was taken off the market several years ago. I smell a rat. Is there any investigative journalists up to the challenge? |
Where does electricity come from?
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| Review Date: January 22, 2010 |
| Reviewer: TPower, CDA, Id USA |
We have been using electricity for over 100 years and I can't believe, based on the reviews of this documentary, how many people have no idea where it comes from. ELECTRICITY IS NOT A SOURCE OF ENERGY! Think about that a minute.....say it out loud..ELECTRICITY IS NOT A SOURCE OF ENERGY! Electricity is only a means to effectively move energy from one location to another. In order to create electrical energy you need some sort of machine to create it and some energy source needs to drive that machine, like coal, gas, hydro, nuclear, and for those of you who don't understand how large our current needs are, you can wish for wind, geothermal and solar.
Converting to electric anything will only increase our demand for generating facilities and this increased demand can not be satisfied with "green" sources. Until we come up with a totally different method of generating energy, beyond our current understanding of physics, we need to look at what is the best way to use the energy sources we have and be realistic in how we develop them. This is not a big conspiracy, this is real life, coal, gas, hydro and nuclear are the most abundant and efficient source of energy that we have and will have for many years to come. |
This should be seen by every adult.
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| Review Date: December 20, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Boydjoe, Nashville, TN United States |
| Don't watch this documentary if your blood pressure tends to skyrocket when you encounter something that makes even an experienced and hardened realist cringe at the corporate gluttony which is revealed here. Every adult U. S. citizen as well as all high school students should be exposed to the conduct demonstrated here which has actually set our country back both in our economic health and in our national security. Here we have what WAS a major corporation on the brink of a new technology which could have benefitted both the corporation and the citizens of this country, and they threw it all away due to its own ill conceived corporate greed and the greedy pressure of its big oil allies. We see in this video a description of what the anti-trust laws were designed to prevent, and yet nothing was done by our government to stop what happened. I cannot recommend this highly enough. |
Cheap and Fast
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| Review Date: December 8, 2009 |
| Reviewer: L. Dye, Lakeland,FL |
| I ordered this for my father-in-law and it was here within 5 days. Great price and fast delivery. Thanks |
Great documentary
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| Review Date: October 23, 2009 |
| Reviewer: John K. Marshall, |
| Our country is doomed to fascist government control and this DVD is just one way to prove it. I don't care if you are liberal or conservative, we are living in desperate times and when the government and corporations get together to destroy the electric car, you can see it as plain as the nose on your face. |
Great Movie about nothing but greed......
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| Review Date: October 21, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Kevin Cramer, USA Michigan |
| It showed me how the system worked - money - the more you have the more you can control - in this movie you will see cover ups, greed, fraud, and more from gm to the White House. Till this day we have and never will buy GM products any more. Gm shredded its electric cars after the California mandate was forced to be drooped by the oil tycoons in the white house. Toyota was the only company to continue its line and look where they are today. It is no surprise that a HYBRID is so named - GM purchased the controlling interest in the nimh technology from Stan Ovinski - then - placed a patent on it and said that if anyone would like to use the NiMh batteries in their cars - they would have to be 50% gas and 50% electric - that is forced by GM. They have a battery that a car ran over 300 miles - check out the T-ZERO - they have a newer model out now but the car company's are in bed with the oil company's so they wont put their batteries in the cars - except TOYOTA. I I will never buy a USA auto again. |
AWESON INFORMATION
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| Review Date: October 10, 2009 |
| Reviewer: D. RODGERS, ATLANTA |
| THIS CD IS SO SOBERING THAT IT IS A MUST SEE. THRE ARE NOW ELECTRIC CAR DEALERSHIPS THROUGHT THE NATION. WE ALL SHOULD MAKE A CONSCIENCE DECISION TO BUY ONE OR CONVERT YOUR PRESENT CAR OR TRUCK TO A NEW GREEN ENERGY AND RELEASE YOURSEL FROM THE GRIP OF THE BIG OIL INDUSTRY WHICH RAKES IN SEVERAL TRILLION DOLLARS A YEAR FROM ALL OF US AROUND THE WORLD. THEY LITTERALLY DICTATE HOW MUCH WE HAVE IN OUR POCKETS. THIS DVD IS ONLY 7.00 PLUS SHIPPING. HOSTED BY MARTIN SHEEN |
All should see
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| Review Date: September 13, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Judith K. Peterson, St. Charles,Illinois USA |
| Everyone concerned about the energy crisis in our country should see this film! By now we should have an alternate form of energy for fueiling our cars. Who would have thought it was out there in the 70's. Think where we might be now if we had continued to improve the elec. car since then. Why did this happen this way?? |
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